Thursday, June 25, 2015

Otello, the Perfect Opera

Opera
Just Isn’t What It Should Be These Days

Patrick Dillon’s review of the video of Verdi’s Les Vȇpres siciliennes as performed at
the Royal Opera House, which appears in the current issue of Opera News, was heartening to this opera
lover. Mr. Dillon pretty well shreds
director Stefan Herheim’s “vision” of Verdi’s opera, and from what I’ve
read and even seen, deservedly so.

When I watched the YouTube video of the final scene of the
opera, I found it ridiculous. Or outrageous. Or both. Not musically, of course;
Mr. Dillon points out how well the singers and the orchestra performed, though
he does fault Antonio Pappano, who as music director of the ROH allowed this
nonsense to take place on the stage. Mr. Dillon goes so far as to recommend a
twenty-five-year-old video of the opera in Italian in preference to this recent
release.

It’s just one more example of the disconnect in opera world
in which the intent of the composer, heard so strongly in the music, is not
reflected by what the audience sees on stage. Call me old-fashioned, and I will
proudly accept the appellation. I’ll align myself with the composer against the
ego of the “director” any time, and for good reason. Who wrote the opera, anyway? These men of the theater were not just
putting pothooks on paper (as Giuseppe Verdi described what he did to set down
the storm of miracles in his head).

The first time I saw Offenbach’s opera Les contes d’Hoffmann was in the mid-nineteen-sixties at the
Cincinnati Summer Opera. It was an English language production, starring two
American singers who were also great actors, Beverly Sills and Norman Treigle.
Julius Rudel conducted and Tito Capobianco was stage director.

It was a great production. Sills played all three of
Hoffmann’s love interests, quite a tour-de-force for any soprano, and she was
incredible. Bass-baritone Norman Treigle was probably the greatest operatic
performer I ever saw and he was brilliant. The opera was beautifully costumed,
the sets were exceptional.

Interestingly, no one referred to it as “Tito Capobianco’s Tales of Hoffmann.” It was duly noted
that his directing skills certainly enhanced what the audiences saw on stage.
My late husband was fortunate enough to be part of the cast as the first act
doll maker, Spalanzani. He found Tito a sympathetic, energetic and passionate
director who worked closely with Maestro Rudel to find what Offenbach had to
say through his music.

To the audience, it was very clear that Offenbach, the
author of this work, was well served. With harmony among all forces, conductor,
director, and performers, Offenbach’s Les
contes d’Hoffmann became an exciting evening of theater and music. Opera as
it should be.

I’ve seen other productions of the work since, most notably
some thirty years later at the Metropolitan Opera in the mid-nineties when
Placido Domingo performed the role of Hoffmann as I had never seen it, bringing
nuance and depth to the role through his glorious singing and fine acting. He
was unforgettable, at the height of his career. The production was exciting. Each
act was presented differently, with its own color. There was humor where it was
appropriate. Watching the great Met chorus during the Olympia act was
delightful and often very entertaining. The Giulietta act was enchanting and
passionate, and Domingo’s voice soared. It was thrilling to hear him. There was
tenderness, passion and tragedy, and some wonderfully chilling moments in the
Antonia act, as there should be. It was a great evening.

I went to a local cinema to view Les contes d’Hoffmann last season as one of the Met’s HD
broadcasts. I’m sure it is apparent that I love the opera, and I was looking
forward to seeing it again.

I saw Bartlett Sher’s Les
contes d’Hoffmann. I have seen this too frequently, the director’s vision somehow
superseding the creator’s. I don’t like it. The director did not write the work.
The director must have a keen understanding of the work, but that does not
include “finding” something in the music and text that is not there.

But what I saw was just that. It was well sung. There were
some interesting moments on stage. There was far too much “busyness” – every opera
has moments where the music should be paramount. It's opera. There was sometimes a disconnect
between what I was hearing – the music was wonderfully performed ─ and what I was
seeing, which seemed confused at times. It seemed the director felt a need to present
what he was sure the composer must have meant to convey, such as having a stage
full of Olympias twirling around during the Giulietta act. I do not hear that
in the music, whether Offenbach actually wrote the septet or not. It was just
distracting.

I was disappointed, because I had read Mr. Sher recently directed
a revival of The King and I which was
very true to Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical. At least, that’s what the
reviewer indicated.

Now I see that Mr. Sher is directing the opera I love most,
Verdi’s Otello. It makes me a little
nervous that Mr. Sher seems fixated on the Risorgimento.
Yes, Verdi was a part of that; he was deeply affected by it, and he had an
impact on the creation of a unified Italy. Otello
was written years afterward, and Verdi had learned his lesson about putting nationalism
into his work when he wrote possibly one of the weakest of his twenty-six operas,
La battaglia di Legnano.

Once unified Italy was a fact, Verdi did his finest work,
and none of it smacks of “nationalism” – Aida,
the Requiem, Otello, and Falstaff. Sixteen years passed between Aida and Otello, when Arrigo Boito presented Verdi with the libretto he had
been waiting for all his life. He and Boito poured themselves into this great
opera. They worked together for years to make Otello as perfect as they could.

I plan to go to my local cinema to see Otello during the upcoming Met season, and I hope very much that
what I will see is Verdi’s Otello. It’s
a masterpiece; in my opinion, along with that of many others, it is the greatest
Italian opera ever written. Verdi took his time writing it, and it was exactly
what he wanted it to be. Everything
is in the text and the music. Please, Mr. Sher, just let Verdi show you what to
do with this. Please don’t add or subtract anything from so perfect a whole.

About Me

After growing up in the unique town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, I went to the College-Conservatory of Music in Cincinnati as a vocal performance major. I met and married a tenor and we had three children, and moved to the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania in 1971 where I established a private voice studio and began directing community and high school musical productions. While in Cincinnati I had the good fortune to be on the administrative staff of the Edgecliff Academy of Fine Arts and the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival.

Here in the Poconos, I directed over eighty musicals from 1984-2015, and had the privilege of seeing many of my private voice students become teachers, professional performers, and most of all, find the joy in using their singing voices.

In 2013 I fulfilled a lifelong dream and wrote my first ever book, a novel entitled HOW I GREW UP, My second novel, ELI'S HEART, was published in June, 2014. My third novel, YOU ARE MY SONG, was released in January, 2015. Novel number four, JAMIE'S CHILDREN, was released in July, 2016, and MEMORIES OF JAKE in March, 2017. MAN WITH NO YESTERDAYS is scheduled to be released on Nov. 11, 2017. My first non-fiction book, "MORE FOG, PLEASE" about my 31 years as a director for community and high school musicals, was released on November 11, 2015.